


To Be Known

by ninjalanternshark



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Anxiety, Coming Out, Cuddle Pile, Fluff, M/M, Trans Character, all three of them are trans, haircut, jim's the focus though, some sort of high school au but like the starfleet academy version of high school, trans author
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-15 20:23:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18506413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninjalanternshark/pseuds/ninjalanternshark
Summary: Jim comes out to his mother and gets a well-deserved cuddle pile with Spock and Bones.





	To Be Known

**Author's Note:**

> the author is touch-starved and has chosen to project onto fictional characters instead of doing anything about it
> 
> tw for: panic attack/big anxiety

“Hey, Kirk, you okay?” Bones asks. “You haven’t touched your food.”

Jim pokes at his tray, not responding.

“Kirk,” Bones presses, waving a fork at him. “Starfleet to Kirk, please respond.”

“I told my mom I’m trans,” Jim says.

Bones looks up. “What? When? Are you okay? What happened?”

Jim stares at him, trying to formulate an answer for all of the questions at the same time. He doesn’t succeed.

“Okay, one at a time,” Bones corrects himself. “When? Last night?”

Jim nods.

“Are you okay?” Bones repeats.

“Think so,” Jim says. “She seemed...shocked.”

Spock walks into the room. He sits by Jim, across from Bones, at the pod of desks. “What are we discussing?”

Jim stares for a few seconds before turning to Bones and asking, silently, for help.

“Jim came out to his mother,” Bones says. “Last night.”

Spock says, “Are you okay?”

“Careful, Spock, he’ll think you care,” Bones says lightly. “But, really, are you okay, Jim? What did she say?”

“She...didn’t.” Each word is an effort for Jim.

“She didn’t?” Spock echoes.

“Jim, give me your hand,” Bones says. Jim moves his hand across the desk. Bones grabs his wrist and glances at his watch.

“Your heart rate is over 120,” Bones says. “And my saying that just made it jump, I _felt_ it.”

“Sorry,” Jim says.

“A heart rate that high could indicate an acute stress response,” Spock says. “Jim is very pale.”

“Jim? Does this feel like garden variety super anxiety, or super duper anxiety on steroids with a touch of death?”

Jim looks at him blankly.

“Probably just anxiety,” Bones says. “It happened with Nyota when she came out. C’mon, Jim,” he says, standing up. “Couch pile and tell us what happened if you feel up to it.”

In the back corner of the classroom, there is a very old couch. It’s been there for at least as long as Jim has been attending the school, and rumor has it that it’s decades old.

Bones tugs Jim toward the corner.

Spock is the base of the couch pile. Being Vulcan, he has the strongest ribcage of the three. Bones guides Jim down to sit and lean backward into Spock’s chest, and then does the same to Jim.

It takes a few minutes of wiggling for them all to get comfortable. Together, they take up the entire couch, which wasn’t that big in the first place.

For the first time since the previous afternoon, Jim is able to relax. Bones and Spock provide comforting pressure, and they’re also pretty warm.

“So, what happened?” Bones asks softly, tilting his head back.

“We were.” Jim stops. “She’d parked the car at the transport station in town.”

_“Oh, my precious baby,” his mom said. “I miss having you here during the week. But at least we got to have a girls’ weekend, just the two of us.”_

_Jim tries to smile and nod, and almost succeeds. Frank had left for a week-long hunting trip soon after Jim had arrived, so he’d only had to see him for a couple hours. “Mom, I-”_

_“I know, you’re having fun at school with all your girlfriends,” she says, poking him in the side. “I’m so glad you’re connecting with the girls there. You never did get along well with the neighbor kids. It’s not good for a girl to be alone in the world, you know.”_

“She was talking to me about how she missed me and she kept - she kept saying -” Jim breaks off again. “It wasn’t her fault, but I couldn’t do it any longer.”

Bones hums sympathetically. “So you came out.”

_“I’m not a girl! I’m sorry, I love you, but I’m not a girl, so please stop calling me one.”_

_“I know.”_

_Jim blinks. “You...know?”_

_“I know. I was young too, once,” she says. “You’re a young woman now, and I suppose it’s time that I started calling you one. But in my heart, you’ll always be my little baby girl.”_

“She didn’t catch my meaning,” Jim says.

_“That’s not what I meant! I’m not - not a woman, not a girl. I’m a boy, Mom. I’m transgender.”_

“Did you clarify?” Spock asks.

“Yes,” Jim says. “I clarified.”

“What did she say to that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you know?” Bones asks.

“I got out of the car and ran,” Jim says.

“Has she messaged you on your PADD?”

“I don’t know. I shut it down. I don’t want to look,” Jim says, taking a shaky breath. “What if-”

“ _What if_ s are highly illogical, Jim,” Spock says firmly. “Would you like to have myself or McCoy look for you?”

Jim nods. Bones sits up and goes over to Jim’s bag, leaving him rather cold.

“Passcode?” Bones says. Jim can hear the familiar sound of the PADD booting up.

“3357,” Jim recites.

“You should stop using the same passcode for everything,” Spock says. “It is highly illogical and conducive to having your data tampered with.”

“It’s convenient,” Jim says. “Bones?”

“She sent you a message last night. I think you’ll want to read it yourself,” Bones says, handing the PADD to Jim. He sits on the couch next to them, moving Jim’s legs from the cushion into his lap.

He reads the message.

_My darling child,_

_This message has taken me over an hour to write, and I apologize for its tardiness. I shall love you always. I understand now that my words stung you, and though I could not have known to avoid using them, I regret them regardless._

_Whether you are my son or my daughter, you are my child. When you were born, I named you for my grandmother. How have you chosen to name yourself?_

_Please write back._

_Love,_

_Mom._

_P.S. Ex astris, scientia._

Jim blinks, eyes burning.

“Jim?” Spock says.

“It’s okay,” Bones says. “You’re okay, see? She loves you.”

Jim tries to hold back his tears, but it’s a losing effort.

Spock sits up, taking Jim with him. Jim leans into Bones’s shoulder, gasping for air in between sobs.

“It’s okay,” Bones repeats, over and over as he rubs circles on Jim’s back. “You did it. You’re okay.”

Eventually, Jim’s breathing steadies, and his eyes dry.

“You can cut your hair,” Spock says.

“What?”

“You have been complaining about the length and style of your hair for the duration of our companionship. You gave your reason to wait as not being out to your mother. Since that is no longer the case, you are free to cut your hair.”

“Oh,” Jim says, hand coming up to touch his long, neatly braided hair. “Yeah, I’d...almost forgotten.”

“Perhaps we can consider that after we have attended the afternoon block of classes,” Spock suggests.

“Yeah,” Bones agrees. “We’d better get going soon, Jim, or we’ll be late to linguistics.”

Jim nods. When they stand up, he briefly regrets the loss of warmth and contact, but puts the emotion aside.

Linguistics goes by in a very slow blur. Jim takes half-hearted notes on the history of galactic standard sign language, but languages have never really been his thing, especially when they’re not actually learning them.

Bones and Jim separate for their next class period - Bones to advanced anatomy, and Jim to advanced engineering. They’re having a lab day in engineering, practicing diagnosing and fixing simple replicators using the contents of a standard Starfleet field toolkit. He manages to focus enough to keep up, but his repaired replicator insists on giving unfortunate characteristics to the items it produces - a fuzzy mug and some very high-proof chicken soup are among its more interesting creations.

And finally, the bell rings, signalling that he’s done with classes for the day. He grabs his bag and heads for the mess hall.

He’d barely touched his lunch, and they’re serving one of his favorite foods - breakfast for dinner - but he only picks half-heartedly at his meal. Finally, he sighs and gives up, putting the still-mostly-full tray onto the dishwashing conveyor belt.

He goes back to the dorm suite he shares with Spock and Bones. Spock is there, but Bones is gone - his anatomy lab must have gone longer than usual.

“Spock, do we have sharp scissors?” Jim calls, rifling through a drawer in his bedroom. He pauses to let his hair down from its tightly done state, grimacing as his fingers run through tangles.

“I suspect that Leonard keeps some in his suturing practice kit,” Spock says. “I am not certain if they will be adequate for cutting hair.”

“Can you try?”

Spock considers that. “I could, but the only haircut I am confident in my skills to reproduce is mine, and it does not seem to be desirable in current Terran fashion.”

That’s true enough. Spock’s bowl cut is endearing, but Jim doesn’t think he could quite pull it off.

Bones returns soon enough, but he heads directly for the bathroom, holding his hands up like he’s in an old-fashioned sterile field to avoid touching any of the furniture.

Jim isn’t sure he wants to know what Bones has been touching, so he doesn’t ask.

Bones’s shower is uncharacteristically long, and it sounds like he’s using actual water instead his usual sonic shower. Jim and Spock exchange a glance from where they’re sitting on the couch.

“I believe that the current topic of the anatomy laboratory class is flesh-eating bacteria,” says Spock, and yeah, that would explain it.

Finally, Bones emerges from the restroom. His hair, just shy of shoulder length, has been roughly brushed back - he almost looks like he could be a Norse god in one of the old movies Jim used to watch as a kid.

“Arms tingling, Bones?” Jim says. “Get any papercuts lately?”

“Fuck off,” Bones says, flopping down onto the couch in between them. “If I die, I’m blaming you, Spock.”

“Quite illogical.”

“Oh, no it’s not. Your transport vessel brought back the bacteria samples we used today, and Vulcan flesh-eating bacteria is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Or smelled,” he adds as an afterthought.

Spock looks like he’s about to disagree, but Jim cuts him off. “Hey, Bones, do you think you could cut my hair with suture scissors?”

“I’ve got better than that,” Bones says, pulling a pair of tiny scissors from his pocket. “This is actually meant for hair. No guarantees it’ll look good.”

Jim shrugs. “It’ll be short.”

“Yes,” Bones agrees. “Okay, let’s grab a towel. Jim, sit down in front of me.”

Jim sits in front of Bones’s spot on the couch, arms wrapped around his knees. Spock returns with a towel, which he wraps snugly around Jim’s neck.

“How short do you want it?” Bones asks, running a hand through Jim’s hair.

“All the way short,” Jim says firmly.

“All the way short,” Bones echoes. “Like with clippers?”

“Um,” Jim says, thinking about that. “Not really.”

“May I suggest using a PADD to provide a reference photo?” Spock says, already grabbing his from the coffee table.

They do a quick image search for “short Terran haircuts” and scroll through images until Jim finds one that he likes and Bones thinks he can reproduce.

Bones starts slowly, a few inches at a time. Once Jim’s hair is short enough to resemble an overgrown bowl cut, Bones stands up and walks around him, trimming here and there.

The haircut takes a long time. Finally, Bones makes one last snip to even something out. He steps back, squints, and grins.

“Alright, Jim, take your towel off and go have a look,” he says.

Jim untangles himself from the towel, cringes at the amount of hair on the floor, and hurries into the bathroom, sliding on the linoleum floor.

The mirror is still fogged from Bones’s shower. He wipes it away with one hand.

His reflection stares back at him. He smiles, not quite believing what he sees.

Bones did a near-perfect job matching his hair to the image. Jim runs a hand through it, not quite able to stop himself from laughing in delight.

“Well, how’d I do?” Bones asks. He and Spock are standing in the doorway, Bones leaning against the doorframe and Spock hovering behind him.

“Bones,” Jim says, blinking rapidly. He wraps his arms around him, squeezing tightly enough that Bones makes a squeaking noise. _“T_ _hank you._ ”

“Aw, Jim,” Bones says. “I have to use my medical skills for _something_ , don’t I? Come on, Spock made popcorn and we have to show him Lord of the Rings.”

Jim doesn’t let go of Bones, but the three of them manage to find their way to the couch anyway. Either Spock or Bones has also dragged away the coffee table and set up the couch’s hideaway bed. Jim ends up firmly ensconced between the two of them, leaning back on a pile of pillows and cushions.

Spock declares the movie highly illogical no less than two dozen times. Bones threatens to tape his mouth shut immediately following at least half of the declarations, and Jim grins at their bickering.

They eventually fall asleep there, the three of them lying in a disorganized sort of pile. Jim slowly drifts off, one arm wrapped around Spock and his head resting against Bones’s shoulder, and he dreams of the bright future.


End file.
